The Better to See With

You can't even tell last Monday there was standing water after Plan473 attempted to be washed off the face of the map.  Hurricane Harvey was wind last year. Flooding was the 17+ inches of rain in two days last week.  Can't even tell.  Look how dry the sand is.  Good 'ol Texas heat.

With things drying out the Work Box had windows installed. Unlike the windows in the Kid's Box, these are new construction windows.  The local hardware box store did not have replacement windows in this size or design.  Trying to keep to the off the shelf construction to make repairs easier, new construction windows were used.

Modified.  But used all the same.  In new construction windows, there is a plastic flange used to attach the window the wooden frame.

With a simple removal process provided by a jigsaw, all four sides were removed then sanded down for smoothness.  Did not want to repeat the door issue again.  Having extra room between the window and the metal window frame was key.

Views out of the windowless windows are bright and clear.  It is also wet and dark.  Can't leave the hatch propped open when there is even just the slightest bit of dew or mist or fog as it all settles inside the box.  Not good.  Water on Work Box materials leads to rust.  Can't sell rusty parts. So any day that has moisture caused the hatches to be closed, resulting in dark working conditions.

With the corners trimmed and sanded the window slid in easy peasy.  It even had to be held in place with a spacer.  Wind might be altered by only having half the window, but not the light.  Light is important as there is no artificial lighting installed as of yet.

The view from the outside is just as good as the view from the inside.  The premade windows make the metal box look more habitable.  Homey.

To seal the windows into place, caulk was decided against as it takes time to dry and rain was in the forecast again at the end of the week.  Today may only be Monday but it would be nice if the windows had a good two or three days to remain closed to allow for the great stuff filling to set in place.  Great stuff is great stuff.  This blob next to the dime was the size of a marble when tested for expansion capacity.  A couple of hours later, wham, three times the size at the size of a golf ball.  If great stuff works, this will be considered for the house windows whenever we get to those.  After installing the Kid's windows and now these windows, prefab windows are definitely the choice. Deciding on how to seal is still up for debate.  These windows are much, much larger than those in the Kid's box and they open left to right instead of up and down but they are only available in new construction.  If great stuff does not work, we may be forced to buy the smaller windows.  Boo.  I really like the full top to bottom screen.    Here's hoping to the great stuff really being great stuff.

Life is Fun

By Monday afternoon after the weekend's rain, water was receding.  Again.  This time in its wake, it left a mess.  Sticky mud.  Water rushing across the flat and peoples yards washed mud into the roadways and low spots.  Mud here is not mud of most places.  It more sand and clay with salt and marine debris mixed together.  But for some reason, it is super sticky.  Sticky like bog mud.  It is fun.  It sticks to shoes and dries like concrete.  It sticks between toes and takes many swims to come out from under toenails.  It sticks to the underside of your car and breaks windows when it falls off on the highways.  Fun.

Water lilies.  Drainage ditches are infiltrated with the ever invasive water lilies.  Beautiful plants they are.  Beautiful, movable plants.  Water lilies grow in the water needing no soil to take root.  Life if fun for a water lily as they just sit atop the water moving with the water and it goes up and down.  Drainage ditches flood all the time.  They are designed to do so.  However, 17 inches of water resulted in a river in the ditches pushing the lilies out of the ditches and into our driveways.  Too heavy to place in the trash, to big to run over with the standard mower.  People across the county will push lilies to the county grassland and wait for the large shredders to come and mow them down.  It will take several passes but eventually, they will shred apart.  Today, in their bright green foliage and purple flowers they are pretty.  Weeks from now when they are yellow and crunchy, they will just be a reminder of the rain and its damage.

Pinfish are fun to catch be it with a toddler pole or a cane pole.  They always bite, are easy to catch, and hard to kill.  Unless it is by something other than humans.  Pinfish are a tasty treat for other fish, birds, and apparently land animals such as raccoons, cats, and opossums too.  Being at the bottom of the food chain kinda sucks. Now he is fish fertilizer.  Placed him in the compost bin otherwise, the gross dog-o will roll in him when he becomes good and stinky in just a few days.  Few things she loves more than rolling in dead stuff on her neck and chest area.  She has come back green, yellow, brown, and of course red.  She has come back smelling of poo both human and animals, of rot both food and animals, and once of slight skunk.  Rolling in rotting fish would be a dream come true for the dog-o.  Fun.

Now that the 17inches of rain have started to recede, this old dog can once again walk through the water instead of swim.  Walking means running.  Oh, how she loves to run through standing water. Reminds her of younger days when she was lots faster at this game.

Running through water is something she has done in years since old age has snuck up on her.  Guess today she figured, what the heck.   You only live once.  Fun, fun.

Rain always brings out the bugs.  By the end of the week there were lots of bugs.  Mosquitos.  Flies.  Dragonflies.  Mosquitos are annoying at most.  Since they are always present, you kinda learn to ignore them.  Swat. Swat.  Flies drive you mad.  Not a fly to be seen until food is popped out.  Loud, in your face, and too quick to swat.  Maddening.  Dragonflies are beaturiful unless they are swooping and swooning to mate with the fan. From as little as one (manageable) to as many as ten (argh) fighting for the love of their fan.  Bickering dragonflies will drive you crazy.  So intense on bickering they land on your head, shoulder, and back waiting for the perfect place to attack intruders.  Once they accomplish this and can mate with the fan, if they are too small their heads get stuck and you have to remove them so they don't die.  Dragonfly-ectomy.  Fun.

He may not be a bug per se, but he was fun. Having to park at the neighbor's house for the past few days while the ground dries out is nice.  There is no mud to slosh through and it is fully shaded. One day I opened the hatch and a green tree frog jumped out at me.  Today while driving, this friendly little green lizard. Don't lecture, the video is a single push on the phone and this is the only 15 seconds of footage I got while driving.  95% of the footage was of space and the dashboard.  The road was more important but it didn't hurt to try.  He would pop up and then jump down under the hood.  He did this forever on the road that was only 20mph.  He popped up once on the highway and that was the end of my little friend.  He went back under the hood and never came out.  Hope he made it safely to his destination.  Guess this lizard decided the highway life was not fun after all.  Watching was fun for me.  Fun. 

Water Water Everywhere

If you follow this blog, then you know there is already a post with this title. Water, Water Everywhere the first time (almost two years to the date of this post) dealt with our lack of drinkable water.  This post will deal with our lack of catchable water.

Wednesday morning dawned yet and sticky.  After a night of thunderstorms, the day cleared out to a fantastic blue sky clear of haze and summer dust.

No, the above two pictures are not the same.  The first one was to emphasize on the sunset.  Love sunsets after a storm.  The second one was for reference for the remaining pictures in this post.  Note the placement of the broken sailboat on the ground in the above picture to the placement of the broken sailboat in the bottom picture.

Saturday morning dawned late and wet. WET.  As in the gauge stopped recording water as it only holds 6".  This was more standing water than ever before.  Even after Harvey. Of course with Harvey, there were no accurate rain readings because all the creditable gauges were blown off the map.  during Harvey, some reports stated 14" of rain. Some reports stated 34" inches of rain.  What we did not get was the 50+ inches of rain that East Texas got when Harvey came.

Once the rain let up, water damage was surveyed.  No water in the Kid's box.  Close, but not in it.  This was a stress point all night as the box only sits about 6 inches off the ground.  One broken sailboat collected...

Two pot plants upended and waterlogged....

Water already receding and it is still just early morning hours...  Hopefully, with any luck, the winds will continue to blow the water out to the ditches and into the bays.  Anywhere but in my yard.  The chicken coop was a drenched soggy mess as the roof leaked.  Water was running out from the coop floor.  Yuk.  Chickens were standing ankle deep in water inside their run.  They were released to find dry land.  Haha.

If the rain collection system had been installed on just four forty-foot conex boxes, the Planner guesses over 4800 gallons of water would have been collected on Friday's night rain fest.  Assuming only six inches of rain fell.  This was more than six inches.  This was biblical.  To figure the amount collected, the rule states for every one inch of rain on a square foot of space, 6/10 of a gallon of water will be collected.  Therefore each box collects about 200 gallons for every one inch of rain.

4800 gallons of drinkable water.  That is over two-thirds of the amount water the storage tanks can hold.  Ugh. Since Harvey blew away our water source, Plan473 has been on a serious water restriction plan. Such as less than 30 gallons a day restriction. 30 gallons to wash dishes, bath, and water chickens. Water is collected when washing morning faces to water the plants.  Plants do not care about moring eye funk. Shower water is collected to water plants.  Plants do not care about body funk.  Straddling a 5gallon bucket took some adjustment but water is water.  Ice melted in ice chest, cold water goes into the chicken water chest.  Water is precious. Friday's rainstorm has lit a new fire.  Installing the water collecting system has just become top priority.

Sunday morning dawned late and wet.  Again.  Rain so hard we could not hear each other over the beating of the aluminum skin trailer.  The Kid in the non-insulated conex box said it was deafening loud.  It rained and it rained and it rained.

With every minute of rain, the stress level rose as we were certain the water would for sure rise into the Kid's box and into the storage boxes on the ground.  There was nothing to do except wait.  And it rained and it rained and it rained.

Then bam, it stopped.  Just like that.  Like the flip of a switch.  The skies cleared out.  The wind laid down.  People emerged to once again assess the damage.

Oh, how lucky we were.  As it turned out, we have built at the point where the water does not get any higher than the top of the footings to the boxes. With this additional 6+ inches the water never once got higher.  It just spread out across the field, into the roads, into the drainage ditches, and across the tidal flat.

With water coming and going into and across the tidal flats, in came the tidal flat residents. See all the bumps above the water line in the picture above? Frogs/toads.  Can't really tell as it was twenty feet away.  All that was seen were their heads.  Other marine life were blue crabs the size of a half dollar, shells with and without residences, and loads of various fish.

How much rain is yet another topic for debate.  The range is a vast as Harvey was.  Some people modestly report 12 inches of rain.  Others report close to 30 inches.  I say it closer to 15-17 inches judging on how many times water was drained from the rain gauge.  Two mornings with full rain gauges is already 12 inches of rain.  17 inches is probably not far from the truth. With water standing everywhere, roads flooding, and cars stuck in ditches up and down our street, we decided just to hang out at home.  What else was there do?  Go boating?

 Just love this kid.  He totally reined in on his inner Huck Finn.

Cyberdyne Modifications

Let it be said when refering to Cyberdyne this is in reference to the Terminator movies, not the real life Japanese based company. Cyberdyne as in the idea of machines/computers taking over the world.  If it suits you better, then refer to the title as the Matrix.  That is probably a better title.  We think only what the computer wants us to think.  Hmmm.... Food for thought...

See this is how it starts.  You take an innocent picture on your phone.  The computers enhance it.

Nobody will ever confuse me with Ansel Adams.  But hey, I still attempt to take decent pictures.  It is just a camera phone but I know people who take freakin' phenomenal pictures with their cameras.

I digress.  So in innocence, you take a picture and you think, hey this is good.  Then the computer takes over and your nice picture looks like garbage.

One day in the not so distant future people won't even know what the true image looks like as the cameras will think for you.

Don't get me wrong, I know and fully understand that photoshop has been around since the dawn of cameras.  Hello, pink lips on a black and white image.  I get it.  I am just saying people are losing their sense of reality.

Life is not pixelated.  Life is real.  It is a sensory overload.   

Life is unsightly. Foul in stench. Bitter in taste. Gritty in touch. Rash in sound.

Modern cameras are slowly removing life from pictures. When reviewing all the pictures the camera self-adjusted it was only of happy outside memories.  Guess the camera does not want to enhance bad days.  Didn't see modifications made to Harvey destruction.

And to this, I stand conflicted.  Everyone wants beautiful pictures.  Blogs with crappy pictures does not a good blog make.  But what about the artistic view?  What if I wanted the camera to only show the little yellow flower in the dark green field.  The point of view was to see the bright surrounded by dark.  When the camera lightens the whole image, the point of view changes.

I want life to be life.  This is not a blog of happy moments.  This is blog where I am trying to be true to myself and what I stand for.  Life is not sunshine and roses out my arse.  Life is ups and downs, hurricanes and floods, cries and joys.  Life is the daily things that are inconsequential on their own but when added up make something truly substantial.

Life is this kid, who for the first time ever, enjoyed a slushie.  As a parent, I guess I could say I have failed him as he is almost 11 and has never had a slushie.  A true summer treat.  Yes, the Cyberdyne created this collage too.  

Too Tight Tolerances

It's Labor Day, let's get laboring. After taking a few days off from ALL work, I woke up this morning and decided today was the day to get back at it.  There is a list of work to do that grows longer every day. Remove one, add two.  However, not wanting to overdo the holiday and the weekend, I settled on installing the Work Box door.  It is an easy job and not having to open, close, and lock the hatch daily would be nice.  Besides, this is a really nice door.

Why? Why? Why?

Why does the Planner have to make the tolerances so tight?  On everything? Since the door frame is metal and welded into place, in order to fit the wooden door into place, the wooden door frame had to be modified.

 "Just sand off the corners", he said.  "Nothing to it", he said.

Ha! Nothing to it. Where have I heard that before? The door frame had to be completely disassembled and planed.  The ever faithful handheld sand was not gonna cut it.  Don't get me wrong, the job wasn't completely difficult, it just took more time than expected.  This was supposed to be a open-close job.

Had trimming had to be done with a hand sander, the job would have tipped into the true work category.  But with machinery available, sanding was completed in less time than it took to get the machine out from storage.  As an added bonus, with ear protectors on to drown out the noise, watching sawdust fall was very therapeutic.

Once finished, the door was glued and nailed together.  Guess that is enough work for this labor day.  When the next door/window frames are made I will make sure (by gently nagging the Planner) to allow for some tolerance.  Better to have than have not.  That is what they invented caulk for.  Space fillers.